News and analysis of critical issues in homeland security

November 7, 2012

The nation has been more deeply divided than today. But the election nearly completed confirms considerable depth and breadth of division.

When Lincoln gave his second inaugural address the nation was still engaged in a great civil war. Appomattox was yet a month away and what a long month it would be.

The resolution of our political — cultural and economic — conflict is much farther from resolution. We should hope, pray, and work to avoid assassination, martial law, and a century-long, still simmering struggle of citizenship bestowed but betrayed. Can we do better than our great-grandfathers?

President Lincoln gave his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865. On April 14, Good Friday, he was shot. Regarding the Second Inaugural and prospects for the war’s conclusion, Garry Wills has written, “The problems were endless, and the very norms for discussing them were still to be agreed on.” This was the context Lincoln was attempting to shape with his words:

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes… Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The Second Inaugural was meant, with great daring, to spell out a principle of not acting on principle. In the nation’s murky situation all principles — except this one of forgoing principle — were compromised…

The problem with compromise on this scale is that it seems morally neutral, open even to injustices if they work. Answering that objection was the task Lincoln set himself in the Second Inaugural. Everything said there was meant to prove that pragmatism was, in this situation, not only moral but pious. Men could not pretend to have God’s adjudicating powers. People had acted for mixed motives on all sides of the civil conflict just past. The perfectly calibrated punishment or reward for each leader, each soldier, each state, could not be incorporated into a single political disposition of the problems…

Abstract principle can lead to the attitude Fiat iustitia, ruat coelum — “Justice be done, though it bring down the cosmos.” Lincoln had learned to have a modest view of his ability to know what ultimate justice was, and to hesitate before bringing down the whole nation in its pursuit.

Lincoln offered his second inaugural to a nation convulsed by questions of freedom or slavery, union or disunion, progress or poverty. Many might characterize our current situation in similarly Manichean terms. Most did not know what to do with the speech. Even a friendly newspaper, The New York Herald, reported:

It was not strictly an inaugural address…. It was more like a valedictory…. Negroes ejaculated “bress de Lord” in a low murmur at the end of almost every sentence. Beyond this there was no cheering of any consequence. Even the soldiers did not hurrah much.

We can never know what Lincoln might have actually done. Six weeks later he was dead. We do not have the benefit of his practical example. He was a shrewd politician who, had he lived, might be less personally revered but whose leadership could have bequeathed a nation more just than what emerged without him.

We are left with the awful aftermath of Lincoln’s absence and his words.

As I consider the election results and the terrible troubles with which the nation must grapple, I am struck by Lincoln’s humility regarding political purpose or specific policies and his absolute conviction regarding how we must struggle to shape purpose and policy: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…”

The past several weeks have made one thing crystal-clear: Our country faces unmitigated disaster if the Other Side wins.

No reasonably intelligent person can deny this. All you have to do is look at the way the Other Side has been running its campaign. Instead of focusing on the big issues that are important to the American People, it has fired a relentlessly negative barrage of distortions, misrepresentations and flat-out lies.

Just look at the Other Side’s latest commercial, which take a perfectly reasonable statement by the candidate for My Side completely out of context to make it seem as if he is saying something nefarious. This just shows you how desperate the Other Side is and how willing it is to mislead the American People.

The Other Side also has been hammering away at My Side to release certain documents that have nothing to do with anything, and making all sorts of outrageous accusations about what might be in them. Meanwhile, the Other Side has stonewalled perfectly reasonable requests to release its own documents that would expose some very embarrassing details if anybody ever found out what was in them. This just shows you what a bunch of hypocrites they are.

Naturally, the media won’t report any of this. Major newspapers and cable networks jump all over anything they think will make My Side Look bad. Yet they completely ignore critically important and incredibly relevant information that would be devastating to The Other Side if it could ever be verified.

I will admit the candidates for My Side do make occasional blunders. These usually happen at the end of exhausting 19-hour days and are perfectly understandable. Our leaders are only human, after all. Nevertheless, the Other Side inevitably makes a big fat deal out of these trivial gaffes, while completely ignoring its own candidates’ incredibly thoughtless and stupid remarks — remarks that reveal the Other Side’s true nature, which is genuinely frightening.

My Side has produced a visionary program that will get the economy moving, put the American People back to work, strengthen national security, return fiscal integrity to Washington, and restore our standing in the international community. What does the Other Side have to offer? Nothing but the same old disproven, discredited policies that got us into our current mess in the first place.

Don’t take my word for it, though. I recently read about an analysis by an independent, nonpartisan organization that supports My Side. It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that everything I have been saying about the Other Side was true all along. Of course, the Other Side refuses to acknowledge any of this. It is too busy cranking out so-called studies by so-called experts who are actually nothing but partisan hacks. This just shows you that the Other Side lives in its own little echo chamber and refuses to listen to anyone who has not already drunk its Kool-Aid.

Let’s face it: The Other Side is held hostage by a radical, failed ideology. I have been doing some research on the Internet, and I have learned this ideology was developed by a very obscure but nonetheless profoundly influential writer with a strange-sounding name who enjoyed brief celebrity several decades ago. If you look carefully, you can trace nearly all the Other Side’s policies for the past half-century back to the writings of this one person.

To be sure, the Other Side also has been influenced by its powerful supporters. These include a reclusive billionaire who has funded a number of organizations far outside the political mainstream; several politicians who have said outrageous things over the years; and an alarmingly large number of completely clueless ordinary Americans who are being used as tools and don’t even know it.

These people are really pathetic, too. The other day I saw a YouTube video in which My Side sent an investigator and a cameraman to a rally being held by the Other Side, where the investigator proceeded to ask some real zingers. It was hilarious! First off, the people at the rally wore T-shirts with all kinds of lame messages that they actually thought were really clever. Plus, many of the people who were interviewed were overweight, sweaty, flushed and generally not very attractive. But what was really funny was how stupid they were. There is no way anyone could watch that video and not come away convinced the people on My Side are smarter, and that My Side is therefore right about everything.

Besides, it’s clear that the people on the Other Side are driven by mindless anger — unlike My Side, which is filled with passionate idealism and righteous indignation. That indignation, I hasten to add, is entirely justified. I have read several articles in publications that support My Side that expose what a truly dangerous group the Other Side is, and how thoroughly committed it is to imposing its radical, failed agenda on the rest of us.

That is why I believe 2012 is, without a doubt, the defining election of our lifetime. The difference between My Side and the Other Side could not be greater. That is why it absolutely must win on November 6.

November 5, 2012

Late Sunday afternoon I drove from Perth-Amboy, New Jersey to New London, Connecticut. It was an interesting trip. On a roughly five mile stretch of primary road in New Jersey I saw at least 16 gas stations. Two were open for business. I think one other was “open” but not pumping gas. Most had orange cones or tape showing they were closed.

Significantly, there was electricity. One of the non-operating stations had an idled generator sitting out front. This suggests the stations had exhausted their gasoline supplies and had not been (could not be) resupplied. This was despite being within about 20 miles of the largest concentration of gasoline supply on the East Coast.

I took the picture above at a Connecticut service area just off I-95 a bit west of Bridgeport. The line was about twice as long as the picture shows. I would have had to hike into the Interstate lanes to actually get the whole queue (and you would not have been able to see the pump-canopy). I had 3/4s of a tank left which easily got me to New London. By New Haven there seemed to be plenty of gas.

When the picture was taken it had been six days since Sandy roared ashore. Despite the pictures — and a couple more days to catch-up — I think the fuel situation is close-to-being fixed. Replacement housing will be even harder to “fix”. Much, much more difficult. Wickedly hard.

The fuel crisis in New York City, Westchester County, Long Island, northern New Jersey, and nearby is important. Obviously it is important to the residents of these areas. Less obviously, it is important to those of us who are involved in homeland security policy and strategy.

In Sandy’s wake supply has not met demand. Not unreasonably, policy makers and strategists have viewed this as a lack of supply. Significant steps have been taken to increase supply. Senator Schumer pushed the US Coast Guard to reopen the ports of New York and New Jersey to fuel deliveries. Secretary Napolitano waived the Jones Act which allows foreign shipping to deliver fuel into the ports. President Obama ordered the military to deliver fuel into the hardest hit areas.

All of these steps have increased supply to the mid-Atlantic and served to suppress price increases. Many far removed from the New York metro area are benefiting from gasoline price reductions related to these steps to increase supply. It has been a vigorous response.

The fuel distribution terminals have been damaged and have not had electricity. South and east of Newark Airport and just west and north of Staten Island is a handful of places where pipelines and tankers deliver gasoline (Google Map). All of these venues lost power. None of these venues were on the utility’s priority restoration lists. The utility — and most policy-makers and strategists — did not know the role nor even the existence of these places. This is where tanker trucks pull into truck racks and gasoline is pumped from storage tanks and blended into tanker trucks which then proceed to various gas stations. There has been no electricity to operate the truck racks and that’s a fundamental problem. There are other problems with debris removal, personnel, damage to the storage tanks, and communications as to which gas stations have power, but these problems have not been the most serious impediments.

Two-thirds (or more) of gas stations have not had electricity to run their pumps and otherwise transact business. Many gas stations have plenty of gasoline, but do not have electricity to pump that gas. Why, you might ask, do gas stations not have back-up generators to pump their gas? This is required in Florida and, maybe (?), Louisiana. It has been successfully resisted in most other jurisdictions partly because it would further diminish the number of independent operators and enhance the market dominance of chains. Most gas stations would lose money on gasoline sales alone and make their (very small) profits on selling salty and sugary snacks, soda pop, beer, and cigarettes. The capital and personnel requirements for purchasing and safely maintaining a generator for conducting sustainable commerce — not just pumping gas — are significant especially for the smaller independent operator.

There are a range of policy and strategy options to address these fundamental problems. In the next two weeks is the right time for New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and others to actively and inclusively consider these options.

It is also my impression — but I don’t have sufficient evidence to prove — that from Tuesday morning to Thursday afternoon/evening, these fundamentals were not being communicated to Governors Christie and Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg, and other senior policy makers and strategists. As a result, considerable energy, time, and effort were being expended on measures that were peripheral to the current problem and may have distracted from resolving the truck rack problem identified above. This, too, is an issue worth considering while memories are fresh and more accurate after-action outcomes can be specified.

To be explicit: There is absolutely no evidence of anyone being negligent or passive (quite the contrary). There is evidence that a crisis, as usual, has exposed aspects of reality that now deserve sustained and thoughtful attention.

Watchline is a weekly information sharing newsletter produced by the Fire Department of New York (FDNY). It primarily covers homeland security topics related to emergency response. The Watchline reaches more than 100 agencies from all levels of government and more than 1000 direct subscribers outside the FDNY. Here’s a copy of Watchline’s “Hurrican Sandy Special Edition.” (You can see an easier to read version here.)

November 3, 2012

WATER: Twelve Jersey shore communities have boil/bleach orders. New York public health officials have released Do-Not-Drink orders for three water systems (including Breezy Point) and boil/bleach instructions for another 23 systems. Despite the wide-spread and persistent power failures, most municipal water systems have been able to maintain their operational integrity. There have been water problems in lower Manhattan because it has often not been possible to pump water into high-rise residential buildings. But… water systems survived Sandy in pretty good shape.

Ahold USA, which operates 772 supermarkets under the Giant Food Stores, Martin’s Food Markets, Giant Food and Stop & Shop banners throughout the Northeast and Virginia, closed four stores, all in Stop & Shop’s New York-metro division, division spokeswoman Arlene Putterman told Drug Store News. One of the stores was in Long Island, N.Y., another was in Brooklyn and two were in New Jersey; the division has 184 stores total. Putterman said the stores would open periodically, starting the week of Nov. 5. Suzi Robinson, spokeswoman for Stop & Shop’s New England division, said the company had “deep experience” handing natural disasters and that all of the division’s 219 stores stayed open.

Supervalu closed all of the 117 Acme stores in the path of the storm on Monday, the day the storm made landfall, but had reopened all but four of them. “We want to make sure that anything we do really helps the communities that we serve,” Supervalu spokesman Mike Siemienas told DSN. “Our top priority right now is making sure that all of our stores that we can get up and running for the community are. And then we’ll work to see what community needs we may be able to assist with.”

Sears Holdings, which operates the Sears and Kmart chains, had 187 stores closed at the height of the storm, but as of Nov. 1, that number was down to 40, while 20 were operating on generators or had generators en route, a representative of the company told DSN. The company announced that it would give out $350 million in rewards to Shop Your Way cardholders living in affected areas, amounting to $20 per cardholder. The company was also shipping extra supplies like flashlights, batteries, generators and sump pumps to stores.

ShopRite had 27 stores that remained closed at press time, but all its warehouses and distribution centers were fully operational and delivering products to stores “as quickly as possible to ensure our customers’ needs are met during this difficult time,” according to the company.

Target had reopened all of the stores affected by press time and also announced a donation of $500,000 in money and goods for storm-relief efforts, including $425,000 to the American Red Cross, $50,000 to the Salvation Army and $25,000 in gift cards.

Walmart had four stores that remained closed as of Nov. 2, but had pledged $1.5 million in relief efforts. The company said it was “working closely” with the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and Feeding America and also donating truckloads of water, food and other basic items and providing charging stations at Sam’s Club stores for members of the public without electricity to charge cell phones and other devices.

PHARMACEUTICALS: Grocery stores have become major distribution points for pharma and in many markets drug stores are among the top five sources for groceries, so the reports above and below involve both pharma and food.

CVS/pharmacy closed “up to 800” stores ahead of the storm due to mandatory evacuation orders, and 60 remained closed at press time due to evacuations or power outages, spokesman Mike DeAngelis told DSN, and 90 were operating on generators. At the same time, 100 were operating without power, meaning they were operating in an “off-line mode” without generators. About 15 stores in New York and New Jersey experienced either a total inventory loss due to water damage or couldn’t be reached for a damage assessment, but the company has donated more than $100,000 to the American Red Cross National Disaster Relief Fund to provide support to affected communities and is distributing $50,000 worth of snacks and bottled water in New Jersey.

Rite Aid closed 790 stores at the height of the storm, and 188 remained closed or were operating without power as of Oct. 31. In addition, eight stores sustained “substantial damage,” and the company expected that number to increase as field leaders gained access to more locations, but the company was re-opening stores “as quickly as possible.” The Rite Aid Foundation, the company’s philanthropic arm, donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross for relief efforts.

Walgreens closed 750 stores ahead of the hurricane, and as of Nov. 2, about 130 remained closed in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The company began stocking extra items like nonperishable foods, water, batteries and flashlights, as well as arranging special transportation and lodging for employees who depend on public transit and preparing 160 portable generators for rapid deployment to stores as needed and dry ice for medicines requiring refrigeration. The company also donated $250,000 to the American Red Cross for storm-relief efforts and three semitrailers full of bottled water to a Red Cross center in New Jersey.

Elsewhere I have argued that the difference between a catastrophic and a non-catastrophic event is often a matter of supply chain resilience. There are places where delivery of emergency supplies by Red Cross or others is absolutely necessary. But no emergency supply system can effectively provide for a multi-million person metro area. The persistence and adaptability of key supply chains, especially water, food, and pharmaceuticals, are foundational to effective response and recovery.

The problem in Swindon (UK) was “a motorist’s nightmare which routinely failed to handle the volume of traffic which converged on it from five directions.” The fix was to “combine two roundabouts in one – the first the conventional, clockwise variety and the second, which revolved inside the first, sending traffic anti-clockwise,” like this:

I don’t know whether anyone on the Nassau County Police Department (in New York) is familiar with the cynefin framework, but it was the first thing I thought of when a colleague sent me the picture below.

As one Hurricane Sandy consequence, the intersection had no working traffic signal lights. Instead of using police officers to direct (i.e., “order”) traffic, Nassau police officers improvised a traffic circle, encouraging drivers to self organize. Their solution changed a chaotic intersection into a (comparatively) simple one.

Some quick aggregation and analysis on three critical nodes. For this summary I have focused on the current situation in the Greater New York City area. This is not a region in which I specialize, I would welcome reader corrections.

By “current” I mean Thursday evening, November 1. This is the oft-referenced 72 hour mark since Sandy came ashore.

Power: 43 percent of New Jersey electric customers (1.7 million), over 1.5 million New Yorkers and close to 350,000 citizens of Connecticut are still in the dark. Several utilities report they expect to reach the 90 percent restoration point within the next ten days (November 9-12). See more details from the US Department of Energy. I have not found any reports of Sandy causing long-term impact on power generation. (There was a Sandy-related safety alert at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Station, but this operation had already shut down for scheduled maintenance before the superstorm hit.) According to the regional grid coordinator, even at the height of the storm there was “enough generation available in the region to cover the loss of those generating stations that are out of service because of the storm. “Transmission capacity, especially in New Jersey, was affected. There were 22 230-kilovolt transmission lines out of service because of flooding in substations in northern New Jersey. The storm compromised 41 transmission facilities in the multi state region most directly impacted by Sandy. But the storm’s biggest impact, as usual, was on the distribution system. In Westchester County alone over 600 roads remain closed because of downed power lines. Flooding has seriously impacted buried lines and substations in New York City and other coastal communities. According to reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “We had massive damage to our infrastructure,” said Chris Eck, a spokesman for Jersey Central Power & Light Co… The New Jersey utilities lost numerous substations to floods, in addition to losing power lines and pole-top transformers. The substations, which serve large areas of customers, must be drained, dried and cleaned before they can be reenergized. Ralph A. LaRossa, PSE&G’s president, said Thursday that cleanup crews were engaged in “hand-to-hand combat” with filth in substations, using toothbrushes and rags to remove dirt.”

Eleven years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Verizon Communications Inc. is once again scrambling to repair severe damage to a key switching facility inside its historic headquarters building in lower Manhattan. The massive facility for interconnecting key communications lines sustained heavy damage after planes struck the Twin Towers more than a decade ago. This time the enemy was water shoved ashore by Hurricane Sandy. The building is one of the worst hit of a number of facilities that carriers were rushing to fix Wednesday… Verizon employees said Monday night’s storm surge was so powerful that it breached the protective plugs that surround cables coming into the building. As a result, water flooded the critical basement “cable vault” that takes in communications cables and directs them to switching gear upstairs, which wasn’t damaged.

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and smaller wireless carriers were also reporting tower outages and system instability across Metro New York and northern New Jersey. Wireless providers are not required to report on system status, but most expert observers seemed to agree roughly twenty-percent of the network is still non-operational across the most affected areas. The power outage is complicating and delaying restoration efforts.

Supply is not the problem. Identifying demand is not the problem. The network for delivering supply to demand has mostly — though not entirely — survived.

In all three cases the distribution system has been disrupted. In particular, transfer capability is a serious challenge for each sector. For example, fuel needs to be transferred from refineries, pipelines and barges and eventually into trucks. The Linden terminals play this function. The Verizon “cable vault” is analogous to the fuel terminals, as are electrical substations.

Our three heroes share a similar weakness. Is there a D’Artagnan to rescue them?

LATE FRIDAY UPDATE:

I’ve been offline, but (mostly) good news today in terms of gasoline distribution in the NYC metro area:

NuStar Energy said the truck-rack facility at its petroleum-products terminal in Linden, N.J., will be back in service by the end of day Friday. NuStar crews were able to bring a generator from one of its Gulf Coast facilities and procured another regionally to power up the truck-rack bays in Linden. The rest of NuStar’s 4.5-million-barrel capacity storage-and-distribution terminal in Linden remains shuttered until commercial power can be restored and damage assessments completed.

In an effort to reduce the impact of crippled fuel flows in the Northeast, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano issued a temporary blanket waiver of the Jones Act on Friday. The move allows foreign oil tankers from the Gulf of Mexico to enter Northeastern ports to provide additional fuel resources, a service usually restricted to domestic vessels. About half of the region’s gasoline and diesel comes from the Gulf Coast via the Colonial Pipeline or via tanker from overseas.

Despite some continued disruptions to supply, other critical terminals and refineries continued to reopen on Friday.

Colonial Pipeline, the 825,000 bpd conduit that ships fuel from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast, said it had restarted a large section of Line 3, its Northeast mainline that runs from Greensboro, North Carolina, to Linden, New Jersey, on Thursday. It also resumed deliveries at its key Linden junction to a connected Buckeye terminal.

“While Colonial’s pipelines and facilities were spared significant damage, many of the terminals in the Linden area will require days if not weeks to fully recover,” it said.

Kinder Morgan said on Thursday it would resume shipping from its New York and New Jersey terminals in the next day or two, after the company brought in generators to power pumps and other equipment. The terminals in Carteret and Perth Amboy in New Jersey and in Staten Island, New York, will begin to receive and move refined fuels in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Royal Dutch Shell said Thursday that all its New York borough terminals were still down. Its Shell-branded network was 84 percent open in Connecticut, 47 percent open in New Jersey, 62 percent open in New York and 83 percent open in Pennsylvania.

Motiva Enterprises said on Wednesday it reopened more of the fuel terminals it shut because of Hurricane Sandy, but four terminals in Sewaren and Newark, New Jersey, and Brooklyn and Long Island, New York, have no restart date.

Magellan Midstream Partners, one of the largest U.S. pipeline and storage terminal companies, said it now has limited operational capacity to receive inbound vessels and barges at its New Haven terminal.

Buckeye Partners said its main New York Harbor area terminal in Linden, New Jersey, was reconnected to its power supply and fully operational by noon on Friday. The company expects its two other New York area terminals in Inwood and Long Island City to return to service by November 2 midnight. The company is supplying jet fuel to the three airports in the New York City area.

Based on today’s (November 2) emergency survey of gasoline availability, EIA estimates that two-thirds of gasoline stations in the New York metropolitan area do not have gasoline available for sale. This number includes stations that reported no gasoline available and those EIA could not reach after numerous attempts, and consequently assume that the station was closed. Of the stations sampled, one-third had gasoline available for sale, 3% were not selling gasoline because they had no power, 10% had power but no gasoline supplies, and 53% percent did not respond to attempts to contact them.

The Obama administration is ordering the purchase of up to 12 million gallons of unleaded fuel and up to 10 million gallons of diesel fuel for distribution in areas impacted by Superstorm Sandy to supplement private sector efforts. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday that President Barack Obama has directed the Defense Logistics Agency to handle the purchase of the fuel. It will be transported by tanker trucks and distributed throughout New York, New Jersey and other communities impacted by the storm.

Governor Chris Christie took action to prevent a fuel shortage and ease the problem of extended wait times and lines at gas stations by signing Executive Order 108, declaring a limited state of energy emergency with regard to the supply of motor fuel and implementing odd-even rationing for gasoline purchases in 12 New Jersey counties. Odd-even fuel sales will take effect in the following counties at noon on November 3, 2012: Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Morris, Monmouth, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union, and Warren.

Tankers able to deliver almost 215,000 metric tons of gasoline are waiting outside New York Harbor to unload their cargoes after the worst Atlantic Coast storm in history shut terminals and halted refineries. Six vessels within a 100-mile radius of the port of New York have been waiting since at least Oct. 28, according to IHS Inc. vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg News today. The tankers, also able to carry cargoes including diesel, are probably being delayed because of the storm and would normally load or unload within two days, according to Truls Dahl, a shipbroker at Astrup Fearnley A/S in Oslo.

The problem with consumer access to gasoline in the greater New York area is not the result of insufficient supply. Rather it is a lack of electricity at the fuel distribution centers in the Elizabeth (NJ) and Newark (NJ) seaports. According to Mr. Risalvato the electric utilities did not have these gasoline transfer hubs on their priority restoration lists until late on November 1. Since Friday morning there has been a sustained effort to restore power to these facilities and some generator power has been put in place. Mr. Risalvato also explain that even once electricity is restored, these facilities will not be operating at full capacity due to damage caused by storm surge.

The 16-million-barrel International-Matex Tank Terminals oil terminal in Bayonne, New Jersey has partially re-opened following power losses due to superstorm Sandy, its operator said on Saturday. The fuel terminal, the biggest in the New York Harbor, is still “coming back online,” said terminal manager Richard Fisette. As of Saturday, around half of the facilities at the site were back to normal operation and the major regional fuel repository was awaiting nominations, or orders to ship out fuel, from its customers, Fisette said. A pipeline serving the facility is operational and damage assessments at the site have not indicated fuel leakage from tanks or pipelines there, Fisette added. (The terminal operator has an especially informative website on the Bayonne facility available at: http://www.imtt.com/index.php?page=bayonne)

Based on today’s emergency survey of gasoline availability, EIA estimates that 38% of gas stations in the New York Metropolitan area do not have gasoline available for sale. This is a sharp decrease from 67% yesterday.

SUNDAY UPDATE

Reuters has a good overview. Some of their reporting on the underlying supply situation disagrees with my own analysis. Reuters is probably correct, the NYC region is not my expertise and fuel is on the very edge of anything that might be called expertise. Still, it’s worth double checking.

Hess, a major gasoline retailer in the NYC metro area, released details of the supply status at all of its points-of-sale, encouraging consumers to select locations with at least 7000 gallons in stock. This is a fascinating step: Please see http://hessexpress.com/FuelInformation

Late Sunday the Reuters leads with a new update (otherwise not much changed from above):

The New York Harbor energy network was returning to normal on Sunday with mainline power restored nearly a week after Hurricane Sandy pummeled the eastern seaboard. Yet damage to infrastructure near Linden, New Jersey, a major northeast fuel hub, kept a major refinery and some terminals shut, lending longer life to gasoline shortages that have persisted in the region. Another looming concern was that heating oil supplies were dwindling with temperatures expected to dip to freezing in New York by Monday.

In my judgment that’s just about right. In terms of gasoline, it will take a few days for deliveries to replenish retail locations — and increased assurance to diminish hoarding — but the strategic shift has been achieved with the restoration of power to the fuel distribution centers and the gasoline stations. I don’t know anything about heating oil.

This concludes the thread. If there are major new developments I will generate a new post.

Well, I lied. One more link: On Monday CNBC ran a report on the key role of the fuel terminals and raised some implications: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000127323&play=1

One of the many stories emerging from the Sandy experience. This one comes from a friend back east.

I had a very interesting technology experience over the past 24 hours. I know we have heard and discussed this many times but it was surreal to actually observe it in real-time.

Monday Afternoon

- Hurricane winds and rain begin.

- I monitor the storm on cable news and weather channel.

- My wife uses the internet.

- My 17 and 12 year olds monitor by texting with friends.

- My 15 year old monitors through Facebook.

Tuesday Early Morning

- Power is out, house telephone is out and cable and internet are out. Generator gets water and some lights going but not cable and internet because of downed wires.

- I find out from my smart phone that a message was left on the house phone voicemail service (I get house phone messages emailed to my smart phone) that school begins two hours late.

- My son’s I-touch does not connect to the internet because the internet service around town is out. He exclaims that he has been cut off from the outside world.

- The cell phone batteries begin to die and texting ceases.

- While the rest of the family’s electronics either don’t work or have run out of batteries including dimming flashlights, I am good. I have my combination radio, flashlight and phone charger that operates by hand crank and solar – no batteries (thank you annual NPR fund drive gift). I have plenty of light and can listen to news about the damage and closings and can charge my smart phone.

Tuesday Late Morning

- Power is still out.

- Kids are at school which has power.

- My wife drives to work only to discover the college where she works is closed. Because of the outages, the college was unable to update their website with closing information and something happened to the automated texting service.

- My wife returns home and announces that she can’t do anything at the house because the internet is down. I remind her that just 13 years ago, we did not even have internet service at our house and that she would have killed back then for a day off to get caught up on life. Apparently, life ceases to exist now without the internet.

- I go to main street to the local coffee shop in search of internet. On one side of the shop are the old–timers who are sharing stories of what streets, homes and stores are damaged or closed. Every newcomer through the front door gets a personal briefing. In the back of the shop are younger folks trying desperately to share the single electric outlet to charge a table full of smart phones, tablets and laptops. They are frantic and stressed that they can’t get on Facebook or text. Meanwhile, the old-timers are laughing and sharing information word of mouth and organizing groups to go to help friends around town. The coffee shop becomes the town’s information center.

- I came into the coffee shop feeling kind of depressed and lethargic. I left 4 hours later feeling energetic and with a sense of camaraderie with the rest of the community. Friends had either seen me at the coffee shop or heard I was there and I received text messages offering up houses with power for me to work at.

Tuesday Night

- Power is still out.

- The kids announce that they can’ do any homework or prepare for next day debates or quizzes because they do not have internet access.

- We head out to McDonalds with two laptops thinking we can have a quick dinner and use their wireless to do homework. As we eat, two customers with laptops in hand are running around the restaurant with the manager trying to get the wireless to work. No luck, the whole internet service to the area is down.

- We head back home. It is raining again and we can’t run the generator in the rain. So my sons construct a lean-to out of tarps, ladders, bungee cords and other miscellaneous things found in the garage. They now have a direct interest in the generator which for the past year I could not get them to take time to learn about. We talk about how it works. We head into the basement and continue the conversation at the fuse box as we switch over circuits from the electric grid to the generator. I have them do all the work. When the house lights up and toilets are flushing, both boys are feeling pretty proud of themselves.

- We sit at the kitchen table and my 15 year old is panicking because he can’t get on the internet to prepare for his school debate. So I ask, what is the topic? He says, “We have to defend whether modern day text books should refer to the abolitionist John Brown as a freedom fighter or terrorist.” This led to a great debate amongst the family around the kitchen table. What is a freedom fighter? What is a terrorist? Was Osama Ben Laden a freedom fighter during the 1980s? At what point did his actions make him a terrorist? After 45 minutes, my son had all the talking points he needed and the rest of the family had fun helping.

- I did not have as much luck helping my other son with his calculus homework.

- I announce that at 10pm I am going to shut the generator off for the night and will restart it at 6:30am. Everyone was looking forward to a good night’s sleep. They were done with their work and in bed by 10pm. At 10:15pm, the power came back on. Everyone got out of bed retreated to their own separate spaces and fired up computers and I-touches. The internet was streaming from every room and no one went to bed until 11:30pm and of course, I couldn’t get anyone out of bed at 6:30am the next morning because they were tired.

For many years the emergency manager’s mantra has included, “Emergency management will never win an election, but it can certainly result in losing one.” This is usually recited by the EM priesthood within ear-shot of mayors or governors. (In the Vedic traditions a mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is capable of causing transformation.)

The truism, even the Truth, at the heart of the traditional mantra is that the effectiveness and more broadly the vigor of a disaster response — good, bad, or whatever — is usually personified in the leader of the time. Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush emerged from 9/11 as heroes to many. Ray Nagin and George W. Bush never recovered from Katrina.

It will be interesting how post-Sandy — combined with post-9/11 and post-Katrina — may amend the mantra.

At least in the short-term, vigor has usually seemed more important than effectiveness. Effective or not, the response to 9/11 was energetic, active, forceful, intense. It was the perception of inactivity in the immediate aftermath of Katrina that indicted those then at the helm. The photo of President Bush doing a flyover of New Orleans in Air Force One took its totemic meaning from a preexisting sense of passive detachment. He did a flyover of Ground Zero too. That’s not what we remember.

In the context of a major disaster a leader is vicariously vigorous (or not). The leader is acclaimed or blamed largely for the vigor or non-vigor of others. Giuliani was undoubtedly vigorous, but his was also a dramatic personification of heroism demonstrated by thousands of others. Some have argued President Bush was very engaged in Katrina operations and unfairly tarred by the less-than-vigorous performance of others. Others offer the President suffered the karma caused by his neglect (or worse) of FEMA.

Partly due to the mysterious alchemy of perceived vigor, one of the results of Sandy may be increased attention to preparedness. The “big ones” — that seem to be unfolding with increasing frequency — are beyond the capacity of the most robust response. As evidence, consider Breezy Point or the Battery Brooklyn Tunnel. Serious and sustained attention to mitigation is becoming a precondition for any response that hopes to appear vigorous, even more so if effectiveness is a goal.

–+–

Ommm… Mitigation is preparedness for response.

Ommm… Mitigation accelerates recovery.

Ommm… Mitigation is the path to enlightenment (and re-election). OMMMMM…

There is still no electricity and some of the church’s facilities have been flooded. There is good cause to cancel. I hope, though, they will proceed. The death toll from the great storm is now over seventy and will probably increase. Trinity is an especially appropriate place and this is the right time to commemorate those who died in recent days.